Data Stream Management Systems (DSMS) are gaining acceptance for applications that need to process very large volumes of data in real time. Applications such as network monitoring, financial monitoring, sensor networks and the processing of large scale scientific data feeds produce data in the form of high-speed streams. Data streams are characterized as an infinite sequence of tuples that must be processed and analyzed in an on-line fashion to enable real-time responses. The increasing use of DSMSs has led to their use for ever more complex query sets.
The load generated by such applications frequently exceeds by far the computation capabilities of a single centralized server. In particular, a single-server instance of a DSMS, e.g., Gigascope, cannot keep up with the processing demands of new networks, which can generate more than 100 million packets per second.